falling
by 50 shades of Fray
Summary: Allison revisits Lydia in her dreams to provide her with some boy-advice.


This one-shot was greatly inspired by a wide collection of love quotes I gathered from the hipster side of Tumblr. Enjoy. :D

* * *

Lydia can't fall asleep.

She hasn't been able to fall asleep for a long time. Two months, precisely. Lydia hasn't been able to fall asleep for two months.

It's been two months since everything has begun to fall to ashes.

_Ashes, ashes, we all fall down._

Though, it seems that Lydia is the only one falling. With no one to catch her.

And in most of her dreams, she is falling. Falling through nothing, to nothing. The compressing air will wind past her in a rapid flurry as she falls to the empty depths of her unknown fate, with nothing to grip or hold on to, each and every single night. She was always numb. Numb both to pain and happiness, both in reality and in her dreams. Lydia couldn't even pinpoint whether these nightly visions could be considered either as nightmares, or just simple dreams.

Anyone else would just say that she was lost. But Lydia wasn't lost.

She knows exactly where she is.

She just hates it there.

Jackson is gone. Aiden is dead.

Allison is dead.

Stiles might as well be dead too. Lydia hasn't been seeing him so much anymore, mostly because he's spending most of his time with Malia.

Lydia, just like everyone else, knows that Stiles is not exactly a sweetheart. Maybe he acted so towards her, back when he had his crush on her, but not anymore. In reality, he was a funny guy with a sarcastic and dry humor. He didn't need to coddle her anymore because now she was merely a "bro". A friend. She had to accept that.

But back when she was sitting quietly in the backseat of his beloved Jeep (the same beloved Jeep he had been completely willing to abandon her alone with in the middle of nowhere to run after his coyote girlfriend), Lydia had had a front row seat to Stiles' and Malia's cheesy '80's movie moment.

Needless to say, that was an awkward scene to witness.

And she feels terrible, because the moment she finally realizes that maybe there really _is_ something between her and Stiles, karma hits her and gives him a hot coyote girlfriend who's probably at least three times more badass than her.

It's Lydia's turn to put Stiles' happiness before hers, and she accepts _that_. She just wishes she had someone to talk to about it.

Allison would've understood. Allison was the only person she'd known who whole-heartedly understood complexity, but could communicate with simplicity.

Lydia begins to fall asleep, her strawberry-blonde hair strewn across her pillow, her body hiding under the thick sheets of her bed. And though her bed is supposed to be warm and cozy and comforting, it does nothing to ease the sinking feeling in both her stomach and her heart as she falls into another one of her deep slumbers, only to fall again.

_She's in the school hallway, sitting alone, back leaning against the bottom locker._

_The school seems to be entirely empty, though all of the lights are on, as if school were still in session._

_The metal she's sitting against is freezing cold, and she can feel its icy chill through her thin tee shirt. She squeezes her eyes shut for awhile, hoping and praying that she would just wake up._

_"Lydia."_

_The familiar voice whispers out to her in a barely-audible breath. Her eyes fly open abruptly to come face to face with Allison Argent. _

_Allison._

_She's wearing the exact same outfit she had been wearing when she had been killed, though her chest seemed perfectly clean of injuries. A angelic smile is gracing her soft features as she waits patiently, sitting with her legs crossed in her usual lady-like manner, allowing a moment for Lydia to soak in her best friend's utterly-normal appearance._

_She whispers, shocked, "A-Allison?"_

_Allison's smile grows wider, her chocolate orbs bright and alive._

_Lydia feels the tears stinging at the back of her eyes. It was Allison, healthy and happy, sitting right in front of her, waiting for her to gain her composure, as always._

_She reaches forward to touch her shoulder, to see if she is real._

_She is._

_Her slim fingers come in contact with Allison's shoulder, muscle and bone and flesh and all. She slowly takes both of her shoulders before timidly pulling her in for a hug. Allison happily obliges and wraps her arms around Lydia in a friendly embrace. And for a moment, she feels complete again and it's like she had her best friend back. Like Allison had never even left them. Had never even left her._

_And then suddenly, Lydia is hugging nothing. Her arms are gripping onto nothing. Onto air._

_Allison is still there, visually. _

_But she's not actually there._

_It's like hugging a hologram._

_She pulls back, surprised. Allison gives her a sad grin, "Sorry, Lydia."_

_"I don't understand, this is a dream, isn't it?" Her tone is desperate, "Anything I want is supposed to happen in my good dreams, right?"_

_Allison shakes her head, still giving Lydia her sorrowful smile, "Anything you _expect_ to happen is supposed to happen in your dreams. Subconsciously, you're always thinking and preparing yourself to lose something or someone. You're so used to losing people in your life that your expectation of me to slip away from you at any moment has become a reality."_

_"No," Lydia exclaimed in panic, "no, you're not going to leave right now, are you?"_

_"Of course not," she smiled again, "but I'll have to, eventually."_

_Lydia nodded solemnly, understanding, __"W-what are you doing here?"_

_"I'm here to talk to you," she says gently, "Are you okay?"_

_Lydia bites her lip, "No."_

_She watches as the brunette's eyebrows furrow in delicate concern._

_"What's wrong?"_

_It's all too surreal to her. She still isn't over the shock of seeing her best friend in-the-flesh again and she's pretty sure she's going to dissolve into a gooey puddle of tears if she isn't careful to keep her voice straight and steady._

_"M-my life's just kind of a mess now," Lydia answers truthfully, brushing a strand of hair out of her face, "you're gone. Aiden's gone. I don't know what to do with my banshee powers and I'm confused about Stiles."_

_Allison smirks jokingly, "I knew you liked him."_

_"Yeah," Lydia smiles sadly, "but he's with Malia now."_

_Allison rests a reassuring hand on her friend's shoulder, but Lydia feels nothing, literally. However, just the sight of Allison's reassurance serves as enough comfort for her._

_"There's nothing I'll ever regret more than the chances I didn't take with him. I kissed him that one time, just for five seconds. And then I fell really, really fast."_

_Allison beams, her eyes shining brighter than any star in the Milky Way._

_"It's called falling in love, Lydia. And it has nothing to do with your brain flooding with phenylethylamine, like you suggested."_

_Lydia smiles softly, "It feels like it though," she takes a deep breath, "I have no one to catch me, Allison, and it's all on me. It's my fault. I am the designer of my own catastrophy, and it sucks," she sighs__, "it was like I'd meant to say 'Please, stay.', because that was all I could think in my head. But I could feel my lips open and and I could hear myself say, 'Alright. Go then. Bye.' I didn't need to let him go, but I did."_

_"Alright, let me explain something to you, Lydia," she opened her mouth to begin what Lydia was pretty sure to be a long, intelligent speech, "You are going to meet many, many people in your life. Some people will make you feel like crap, some people will make you feel like you're worth more than any historical monument or scientific breakthrough in this world. Some people will bring out the best in you, and some people will bring out the worst. But then there are other people, the remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most of everything. Absolutely everything, the best in you, the worst in you, and every single tiny thing in between. And they'll make you feel so alive that you would follow them straight into the flaming pits of hell, just to keep getting your fix. One day, you'll meet this person, and ultimately, he's going to find out how you chew, how you take your coffee, how you write, how you smell at every point of the day. He'll know what your face really looks like under those thick blankets of makeup. He'll know your shoe size and your the names of your magazine subscriptions. He'll know about all those little things you obsess over, which books and TV shows make you crazy happy and which characters you like and dislike. He'll know how incredibly cranky you can get when you're tired. He'll know every single one of your flaws and insecurities. He's going to know everything about you. And you know what? He's going to love you anyway. And if Stiles is this person, he'll come back to you. If it's meant to be, it will be."_

_She'd never heard her best friend say something so beautiful, yet accurate at the same time. It was like poetry could grow on the tip of her tongue and spiral out of her mouth in a complex flurry of truthful, dainty descriptions._

_"I'm scared of falling, Allison."_

_"Don't worry, if he doesn't catch you, someone else will," she smirked again, "but it'll probably be him."_

_Lydia beamed, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill, "Thanks, Allison."_

_"Of course," she smiled one last time, "remember, Lydia - never frown: someone could be falling in love with your smile." _

_And with that, she slowly begins to fade away, like salt dissolving into water._

Lydia wakes up with a jolt, like she's suddenly landed on a safe surface.

The next day, she goes back to school.

She's in the same hallway she was in during her dream with Allison, at her locker, when Stiles passes by, an arm slung around Malia's shoulders as they walk down the hall.

Stiles and Lydia make eye contact. And for the first time in a very long time, Lydia gives him a wide, radiant smile. The kind of smile that causes the corners of your eyes to wrinkle. The kind of smile that makes your teeth look whiter and your eyes look brighter. The kind of smile that is undeniably contagious.

He's surprised, because he's seeing that one, special smile for the first time in a long time. She's wearing that one smile she'd worn when she'd entered his third grade classroom in a fancy green dress that matched her eyes, with her strawberry blonde hair wavy, cascading down her back in natural, gentle curls. That one smile she'd worn when he'd called her beautiful at the Winter Formal, that smile she'd worn when he scored that one winning goal at his lacrosse game.

She was wearing that one smile he had fallen in love with all those years ago.

She watches as he grins back so widely that she's sure his stupidly perfect face is going to split in half.

Maybe her brain really was overflowing with phenylethylamine.

Their gazes stay on each other, their eyes stuck on each other like super glue, until he's forced to turn his back.

And when he does, Lydia just looks to her feet, trying to hide her wide smile behind her locker, trying to ignore that ticklish, fuzzy feeling that's currently buzzing throughout her body, like an earthquake has just rattled her entire being, leaving a massive aftershock that leaves her heart beating loud and clear in her ears. She continues to smile to herself, remembering Allison's words.

_If it's meant to be, it will be._


End file.
